Guilty plea entered on stolen gun charges

Marysville gun dealer Ken Bair still
doesn’t remember getting hit on the head with a boat oar last year or
much of anything before Oct. 26. Missing information includes buying
stolen guns, but he has made a deal with federal prosecutors and pleaded
guilty to doing that.

The plea was offered before Judge William
Caldwell in U.S. Middle District Court on July 7. His attorney is John
F. Yaninek of Mette, Evans & Woodside in Harrisburg, who did not
return phone calls.

The charge carries a maximum 10-year sentence.

Bair, 57, is accused of knowingly taking possession of firearms that were stolen by a cohort who also was charged in the scheme.

Bair was attacked in his Main Street gun shop a week after he was arraigned.

The cohort, Ronald Wolf, 36, formerly of
Harrisburg, was charged a month after Bair with one count each of felon
not to possess firearms and knowingly possessing stolen firearms and
several counts of possession of a firearm in relation to a drug traffic
crime. That charge carries a mandatory, minimum five-year prison
sentence.

Wolf also faces state court charges in 22
burglaries in Cumberland, Dauphin, Juniata, Lancaster, Lebanon,
Northum-berland and Perry counties. The burglaries happened during an
almost 18-month period between the fall of 2003 and February 2004. Many
of the break-ins involved the theft of firearms.

Wolf’s troubles don’t end there. He also
faces escape and assault charges after a May 25 incident in New
Bloomfield during which he head-butted a constable who was driving him
back to Perry County Prison from an out-of-county hearing. He escaped
from the car and was captured several hours later in Hazelton.

Bair has not been charged in state court,
although District Attorney Chad Chenot is reviewing the option. There is
no double jeopardy between state and federal courts, Chenot said. “But
as a general practice, the state charges get dropped,” he said. “In
Wolf’s case, he’s charged in state court because the federal charges
involve only firearms, not the escape and assault and burglaries in
which firearms were not part of the stolen property.”

Since both state and federal charges are
in play for Wolf and maybe for Bair, there are many options for how they
would spend their prison time, including all of it in federal or all of
it in state, or some time in federal followed by the rest in state.
There is no formula for determining that, according to John Hageman,
special agent and public information officer for Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms.

No dates are set for either sentencing Bair or a trial in federal court for Wolf.